Public Relations

Public Relations is Vanity Gone to College

John Bradley "JJ" Jackson

22 Aug 2008 • 1 min read

Too many press releases beat the drum about new product releases, product features, and the daring follies of egomaniac CEOs. Most this crap is just plain vanity and worthless to their audience. Can you hear the delete key tapping away?

Good PR informs that reader about matters to them, not the authoring company. To this end, here are few best practices for good PR:

• Create the positioning message; what is the one thing that you want your target market to know about you or your firm?
• Write a two- to three-word mantra which describes the message. These will be the words used in your workplace and externally. They must be memorable and believable.
• Your message should be short and memorable for external consumption. Make sure that all employees can echo this message. They need to understand it and believe it along with you and the customer.
• Test your message with your staff, your vendors, and your customers. How does the target audience receive it?
• Adjust your message based on the feedback. Test it again.
• Create press releases so that you present your pitch in the form of news. More than a commercial, tie the launch of your press releases to a significant event to create timeliness. The press is always interested in what is timely, informative, and they like it to be a bit controversial.
• Introduce yourself to analysts, industry mavens, and people of influence. This may seem daunting on your own, but if you start asking around and watching for names in the industry periodicals, you will find them. This is also when a PR agency helps a lot. Your goal is to build a relationship with these movers and shakers; it is up to you to stay in touch since they won’t call you.
• Track your success by monitoring new leads, number of press quotes, and other indicators of awareness. This will help evaluate the effectiveness of your current PR efforts and help with future PR choices.
• Create a constituency with the readership by seeking feedback and involving them in the critique of your PR effort. Heed their advice and modify what your plan. This will also help facilitate the creation of relationships with the press.

Build awareness, create a constituency, and solve problems; be more than noise. Be a source of knowledge on the problem that your product or solution solves.